Sunset from scrapper encampment, Detroit

The light is so short these days the only photos I can go out and get after the wife comes home from work are these cliché sunset pictures, and I won't be able to get very many of those much longer. I did find a long-established scrapper encampment within dogwalking distance of our house, and I actually started talking to some of these guys. For all my trashtalk, they're generally hardworking, self-reliant, harmless guys. Anyone who can survive subzero winter nights in makeshift shelters with nothing but ratty coats and a pile of blankets deserves some respect.

Having gone through a few buildings set to be demolished in the near future that hadn't yet been fully scrapped, I have to say that I'd rather these guys go in and remove everything of value and recycle it rather than having it all go to a landfill.

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Computer Lab, abandoned Detroit public school

This is just a teaser for an upcoming post I'm going to have to write about my most depressing visit to an abandoned public school building yet. Seriously, when I got back from this one I brushed the asbestos dust off my jacket and hugged my kids until both of them were like, "WTF, dude?"

I don't plan on identifying the school or showing any more of the hundreds of photos I took there until I've had a chance to try to contact the former principal or representatives from the district about some things I saw inside.

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Snow at former site of housing projects, Detroit

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Gram at nine months

Such a happy little buddy. 30 inches. Six teeth. Clapping hands. Climbing stairs.

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Scrapped piano, Wilbur Wright High School, Detroit

There was a baby grand a few feet away still standing on its legs. You could have played it if all the metal hadn't been stripped away.

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Buckled floorboards, Wilbur Wright School vocational classroom

The floors in this classroom looked like what you expect the ground to look like during an earthquake, except frozen that way.

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Leaf Pile

God fall went by fast, he thinks as a car shedding snow from its back window passes him on the highway.

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The Old Neighborhood

I found a giant mound of rubble in the middle of the prairie---it turned out to be buildings and homes and lampposts that had been bulldozed---and climbed to the top to catch this shot. The car in the center of the picture had driven past me earlier, full of white people ogling what had happened to their old neighborhood.

(see today's post)

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The return of the blue jumper

I saw it in the closet the other day and thought I'd give it a try. Lo and behold he was already almost too big for it. Keep in mind his sister was still wearing this until a little over a year ago. It was always my favorite outfit.

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Ground floor, Roosevelt Warehouse

My wife's brother was just in town and I wanted to show him the old book depository/Roosevelt Warehouse. There were at least two groups of photographers in there when we popped in and a bunch of scrappers burning the plastic off the metal wiring that they were still stripping from the building. The air was filled with the smell of burning plastic and the rays of the sunset illuminated the toxins floating through the air. One of the scrappers demanded money from us and I told him I'd been in that building a thousand times and never had to pay a toll, but I got the impression so many kids have been breaking into the place over the past few months that these guys have found a lucrative side business.

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A perfect fall day. . .

Now go vote (if you haven't already).

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Motor City Story

The sunlit ruins in the distance on the right are part of the old Packard assembly plant, where some of America's finest automobiles were built for more than half a century. On the left, automobiles deemed no longer fit for use are crumpled together in massive towers, many of them retaining some hint of the personalities of their previous owners: bumper stickers ("Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign") and front plates promoting local sports teams or one's preference of fishing over one's current predicament. Between them: a dozen trailers advertising Toyota as the sun sets on the Motor City.

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